Years are Not Kind
by WaddleBuff
Summary: Felix Leiter has seen more than enough excitement during his long-storied career in the CIA. During an assignment in his late sixties, the field agent reflects upon the direction he truly desires for his future.


Felix sat upon the park bench, back hunched, jaw set with a grimace. His fingers were intertwined, thumbs twiddling about each other in a continuous gyration. His eyes stared forward into the Beyond, glazed over as his thoughts overtook the reality of the world around him. His bushy, overgrown facial hair accentuated the weathered, aged lines at the corners of his eyes.

A white plume of inhaled smoke exited his nostrils, extended thumb and forefinger absentmindedly extracting the Cuban cigar from his lips. Felix's lungs puffed out the wisps of warm, inhaled smoke, the coffee and cocoa intermingling with a whisper of vanilla in perfect harmony.

He sighed before placing the orange-lit Montecristo in between his teeth. It had been a difficult task to obtain the expensive smoke, but Felix's newfound habit needed to be fed. Considering his current position and weathered, filthy layers of clothing protecting him from the harsh bite of the November cold, the cigar protruding from his lips seemed incongruous.

It was the only break of stereotypical homeless veteran that existed, though he was anything but homeless, and his years of service prohibited him to deserve the title 'veteran'.

In truth, Felix Leiter was under deep cover, awaiting in a dark, shrouded area of New York's central park to rendezvous with a fellow Central Intelligence colleague. The two had been assigned to gain as much information as they could of an underground, organized collective that inhabited the city's slums, with each agent ordered to switch periodical deep infiltration into dangerous hostile territory. It was a simple field assignment, one that didn't merit too much caution; danger was minimal.

Which was to be expected.

Yes, there was always a risk, but the real 'danger' had long been removed from the equation when Felix's superiors would send him out into the field. He reflected upon the first mission in which this pattern began to emerge; it was a few weeks after his sixty-fifth birthday. Though it was normal to receive tamer field assignments, the (as the agents of the agency would call it) soft missions gradually began to increase in their security. He didn't complain, in fact, he was somewhat grateful. Felix had already predicted that his dog days of the Agency would arrive soon, but once they did, he found it to be a welcome retreat from his previous high octane assignments.

It wasn't as if he didn't miss the excitement, the looming danger. He longed for the adrenaline to course through his veins, fueling his actions with the potency that was tenfold the effects of caffeine. Most of all, he missed Bond. How long had it been since their last encounter? Five, six years? Damn, he was getting old.

But then, his mind recalls the face of Della, his deceased wife. At this, the grimace hardened, and his longing for the "old days" quickly diminished. The stub of what had once been his leg made its appearance known, the concealed prosthetic leg below it suddenly feeling alien and out of place. He had definitely lost his share of things over the course of his years. But even so, he missed his younger years, and his younger self.

Felix glanced at his watch. The current time was 2100. Late enough for the regular civilians to withdraw to uptown, early enough for the night predators to surface and make their appearance.

His right wrist resting atop his kneecap, he gave a it a few slight flicks, scattering the hot ashes from the tip of the cigar nestled between his thumb and forefinger into the air. He watched as the small, white flakes flittered slowly to the ground, some of them still slightly alight with a soft, orange glow.

His gaze is returned to the cigar, at which he turned it over and round his fingers with a slow, inspecting pace. Felix sighed before glancing at his watch again. 2123.

He grunted.

His colleague was late.

Shaking his head, Felix raised the cigar to his lips, taking a long drag before tossing the still-lit delicacy into the darkness. Sitting back into the bench, he attempted to spread his arms across its top, before grunting in pain as an old injury made its presence known. He settled with crossing his arms instead.

Lifting his head straight upward, his eyes are met with stray beams of moonlight penetrating the thick, leafy canopy. He released a breath that he had been holding, and along with it smoke from the last drag of his cigar fluttered and danced into the piercing blue of the moon's rays.

Above his head, in the canopy of intertwining trees, a crow cawed into the night before a flutter of near-silent wings followed as it fled into the darkness. To some people, it might have been an omen. To Felix, it was just a damn bird.

Felix scratched at his beard. It really was a bother to have taken this cover. The Agency had proclaimed it was because his rapid facial hair growth and prosthetic leg would be convincing as a cover; a homeless veteran cast out by American society.

Bull.

He knew it was because it was the safest assignment and cover his superiors could muster, while still conforming to Felix's wishes to remain as an agent in the field. If it was up to the higher-ups, the hardened old man would have been assigned a desk job years ago. But fortunately, he was given a choice as a result of his "many years of dedicated service". More bull.

Suddenly, Felix is broken from his daze as a hidden earpiece began to crackle to life, a voice following shortly after.

"…_Leiter. Come in, Leiter._"

He recognized the young voice of his colleague immediately, and just as immediately spoke back.

"Agent Leiter here. What's the fix?"

"_Rendezvous point has been relocated. From current position, walk two hundred meters before taking a sharp left._"

Felix didn't question anything. His nonchalant, somewhat bored manner maintained its adamancy.

"Copy that."

At that, the comlink went dead, prompting him to stand up (with some groaning and difficulty, another gift of old age) and begin walking towards the new rendezvous point. His swirling melting pot of thought immediately dissipated as concentration was put forth with every step. Bushes rustled from either side of him, but he dismissed the small disturbances as little animals scurrying about in the night, a result of his skilled hearing and years of conditioning.

Several paces later, the man took an abrupt left turn into the grass and foliage, continuing onwards into the encompassing darkness as the light from the barely-lit park lights ebbed away. By now the only sounds were the shuffling of his oversized clothes and the steady rhythm of his breaths. The loud sounds of the Big Apple were filtered by hundreds of feet of foliage, rendering them to nothing at all.

Felix could feel his heart rate increase as his feet continued onward, but it was a feeling that was nothing out of the ordinary. Finally, from within the darkness a figure stepped forward, relinquishing its position of leaning against a tree. His eyes already adjusted to the darkness, Felix could make out his colleague's features very clearly; young, but weathered, face, hair that was just beginning to recover from the standard army buzzcut, stubble thick enough to accentuate his bright green eyes, and a business-like smile that curved his lips upward.

He was the next generation. And Felix couldn't help but feel contempt.

"Evening, sir."

"Evening. Any new intel?"

The colleague shook his head.

"Nothing much, sir."

Felix shot him a glare.

"After fifteen hours in deep infiltration, _nothing much?_"

The grin that was on the colleague's face widened. Immediately, Felix went tense. He had been in the field enough years to recognize hostility emerging from an act of friendliness.

"Nothing much that could help you, anyway."

At that, the young man extracted a Glock 22, a suppressor screwed on its tip. Its small-but intimidating-hole pointed directly at Felix's chest.

His eyes widened. His tense muscles launching into action.

Before any significant evasion could be executed, time slowed as his eyes beheld the finger wrapped around the trigger squeeze, the dull sound of the pistol echoing in the small perimeter of foliage.

_Pchnk!_

In the brief milliseconds before the first bullet made contact with his body, Felix wondered if this was the beginning of his desired excitement.

Or just early retirement.


End file.
